Table Scraps

Local take on Four Seasons

In three months, the Four Seasons resort will become officially
recognized as “local” with its three-year anniversary just around the corner.

I personally think the hotel was local long before it.

One of Whistler’s cornerstone citizens, Isobel MacLaurin,
defines local not in years, but in how much an individual or organization has
invested in the community.

With general manager Scott Taber at the lead, the Four Seasons
has definitely woven its way into the fabric of this community, most notably in
its support of the arts. That commitment includes the Whistler Theatre Project
and hosting Whistler’s most talented, not to mention youngest, jazz chanteuse
Ali Milner, who sits down at the grand piano every Friday from 4 to 7 p.m. in
the hotel’s Fifty Two 80 Bistro and Lounge. The EMI recording artist, who will
graduate from Whistler Secondary School next year, needed a local outlet to
call home and she found it at the Four Seasons.

So why all this talk about local in a food column?

I joined the new communications manager for a sampling of two
new tasting menus this week priced at $29 and $39. The bistro’s Wellness Menu
was prompted by Whistler Wellness Week, but the light rendezvous will carry on
in the regular menu as well. (Thank goodness; diners looking for a flavourful,
weightless and breezy summer dining experience are going to have a new
favourite hangout.) There’s also a Chef’s Tasting Menu that aims to tantalize
locals into the bistro’s garden hideaway in the Upper Village.

My host and I discussed the different identities of restaurants
in Whistler. The Rim Rock is known as the local’s place, sort of the Boot Pub
of the fine dining industry. The Bearfoot Bistro is the champagne hangout of
luxury that draws a local crowd with the $10 dozen oysters from 4 to 6 p.m.,
not to mention pianist Cameron Chu’s fancy finger work. But what about the
Fifty Two 80 Bistro and Lounge?

So young, I don’t think the bistro has formed a local identity yet
— of course internationally it is recognized as one of the most luxurious
hotels in the world (recently by Conde Nast Traveler and Travel and Leisure).

If anyone is going to find this elegant yet not-stuffy bistro
an identity, it is going to be the new executive chef Scott Thomas Dolbee. The
former Regent Beverly Wilshire Hotel chef served all of Hollywood’s red carpet
royalty.

He smiles when I ask who.

“Ever watch E?” he said of the entertainment show. He then
mentions something about the never-ending requests for Cobb salads.